by Heidi Rice
The barrister jumped back up. ‘But, Your Honour, that’s outrageous. Mr Devlin has a business to run in Manhattan, this punishment far outstrips the offence for which—’
‘Mis-ter Grayling, sentence has been passed. If you wish to appeal it, you can do so.’ Judge Benjy’s gaze slid back to Luke, who was showing no emotion whatsoever that Ruby could see. Although his shoulders looked rather tight.
He had to be furious. But he could have been a lot more accommodating and a little less arrogant.
That said, why had Judge Benjy gifted them with Luke’s community payback? They weren’t a public institution.
They did do some gratis outreach work for the local council by running non-profit screenings for schools in the area and the senior citizens – but they’d never had a community payback order made on their premises before.
‘Mr Devlin half-owns the cinema, Mr Grayling,’ Benjy added, going the full Judge Dredd now – all pomp and circumstance and taking no prisoners. ‘I can’t imagine why he’d object to basically working for himself to improve facilities that have been enjoyed for decades by our local community.’
Grayling opened his mouth, but Benjy slammed his gavel down. ‘This sentencing hearing is closed.’
Ruby stood, shocked by the verdict.
Should she go to Luke, and apologise for the arrest … again?
Her gaze connected with Luke’s as he stepped down from the dock. The barrister and solicitor surrounded him, talking at him in furious whispers, but that pure blue gaze remained fixed on her.
The tense expression on his face wasn’t hard to read.
He was furious, but when he broke eye contact to walk out of the courtroom with his legal team, she had the strangest feeling it wasn’t her he was furious with.
***
Terrific, you’ve just managed to turn a cluster fuck into a cluster fuck-tastrophe.
‘Mr Devlin, I assure you this sentence will not stand. We can appeal it. The magistrate clearly had prior knowledge of your situation, which suggests a conflict of interest, and we can—’
‘It’s okay, Grayling,’ Luke interrupted the stream of outraged legalese that was costing him five hundred pounds an hour. That had been his first mistake. Hiring a Queen’s Counsel to argue a misdemeanour case in Civil Court. And then letting his jet-lag and his extreme irritation – from that weird jolt of awareness at seeing Ruby Graham again – get the better of him. He probably deserved the damn slap. He had behaved like an arrogant asshole. The magistrate had spotted it, even if no one else had.
Or rather his fifth mistake, he corrected as he watched Ruby and her selfie-snapping friend from The Wizard of Oz night, disappear down the corridor towards the clerk’s office. Ruby was dressed in another of those shorty dresses with the biker boots she’d been wearing three weeks ago in the Park. He jammed his hands into the pockets of his suit pants, the memory of inadvertently grabbing her ass as she dropped into his arms way too vivid, the weird jolt of awareness coming back for an even weirder encore.
No, his first mistake had been to follow Ruby to the park thinking he could fix her grief when he didn’t even know her.
His second had been to engage in a conversation with her about a man who meant nothing to him and meant so much to her.
His third had been to help her scale the gate, discovering exactly how glorious her ass was in the process.
And his fourth and final mistake had been to indulge in a halting chorus of a cheesy eighty-year-old show tune while Ruby stood beside him, scattering her best friend’s ashes, the tears she was unwilling to shed causing her to tremble over every single note.
1Because now he felt invested. And responsible. In a way he hadn’t felt since he was a kid and he’d walked into the en-suite bathroom in his old man’s townhouse in Montecito and found—
‘I’m going to do it,’ he said to Grayling and Janet Abernathy, the solicitor, blanking the picture in his head which was only going to turn this cluster fuck-tastrophe into a cluster fuck-mageddon. ‘The sentence … I’m going to do it,’ he added, because both Grayling and Abernathy were momentarily dumbstruck.
‘You really don’t need to do that, Mr Devlin,’ Janet Abernathy pitched in first. ‘It’s a fairly simple process to get it overturned. All we need do is show that your business interests will suffer if you’re forced to stay in London for any length of time. And a magistrate’s court simply does not have the jurisdiction to compel a US citizen to—’
‘I have both US and British citizenship,’ he said. ‘And I can rearrange my schedule.’ Gwen was going to love him when he gave her the good news. He’d have to give her an even bigger bonus this December. ‘To make sure my business interests don’t suffer, there’s always the Internet, and I can fly home on weekends, right?’
‘Well, yes,’ Janet murmured. ‘Community payback orders only apply outside the hours of work if the subject is employed.’ Her gaze intensified. ‘In fact we could negotiate a lengthy time frame to complete it, so you would only have to return for a weekend every couple of months. Or perhaps we could offer a donation in lieu of your time on—’
‘Nope, I don’t want to do that,’ he added, surprised to realise it was the truth.
Throwing his money around had already made him look like enough of a dick and he wanted to get this over with – stringing it out for months would only increase his contact with Ruby of the Lush Ass and Sad Eyes and that probably wasn’t a good idea. Plus, the theatre had less than three months left in business now, if his financial calculations were correct. ‘I’d rather just do the time.’
It’s what he’d always done to make cluster fucks go away: bury his head in work – the harder and sweatier and more time-consuming the better. This would be the first time he’d be doing that to fix a cluster fuck of his own making, so at least it had novelty value. Plus, it was years since he’d had to get his hands dirty on a job. And even longer since he’d strapped on a tool belt. From the snapshot he’d got of The Royale while he was being mobbed by the Falcone for Pope brigade, it needed a lot of work. The cornices were crumbling, the carpets were wrecked, the paintwork looked as if it had been done by a five-year-old and the light fixtures, even in the lobby area, hailed back to the days when Judy herself had been a bright young thing and drug addiction, burn-out and an untimely death had all still been years ahead of her.
He was a code certified electrician, knew enough about plumbing and roofing to fix any major problems, and had more than enough experience as a painter, decorator and carpenter to handle anything the old building had to throw at him. And while he’d never met his Uncle Matty, after singing a few off-key choruses of the guy’s favourite show tune, in a weird way he felt like he owed him. Something. Working on his uncle’s movie theatre ought to get that out of his system before they had to sell the place.
Plus, he had once loved getting his hands dirty.
And he’d missed it. Luckily, he had no major projects launching globally at the moment. And when was the last time he’d taken any vacation time? A genuine break? Not only that, but the greatest plus of all, he’d be an ocean away from the biggest drama queen in the Western World for four whole mental-health-cleansing weeks while she was rocking her grief-stricken dying swan act over the untimely demise of the brother she hadn’t spoken to in thirty years.
Cowardly yes, but what choice did he have? He’d gotten into this fix by helping out Ruby Graham, so now he was going to have to help out Ruby and her movie theatre to get out of it again. There was a certain freaky kind of logic to that, too. And he loved logic. And heck, if he did the work he’d be increasing the property’s potential profit when they had to sell the place.
When you looked at the sentence that way, it was almost a win-win.
He tensed at the memory of holding Ruby Graham’s warm weight in his arms, her fresh spicy scent filling his nostrils and the weird jolt of awareness that had freaked him out a moment ago, then released a careful breath.
This de
cision had nothing to do with Ruby, or her toned thighs, or her full, firm breasts, or her sweet sensual voice catching on the words of that dumb song. This was about owning his own shit after a couple of dumb decisions, bad mouthing a judge for no good reason, paying a debt to his Uncle Matty and getting the heck out of his mom’s orbit.
He didn’t owe Ruby a thing – especially not after getting himself arrested and slapped with a community service order on her behalf – and the weird jolt would go away as soon as he got stuck working in her theatre.
He tugged his iPhone out of his pocket after bidding goodbye to Grayling and Abernathy, who still looked shell-shocked.
Join the club, guys.
‘Hey, Gwen,’ he said when his ultra-efficient administrative assistant picked up on the first buzz. ‘I’ve got good news and bad news,’
‘Hit me with the good first,’ she said in a suspicious growl, because Gwen Calhoun was nobody’s fool.
‘You’re not going to be seeing much of me in the next four to six weeks.’
‘Damn, that actually is good news!’ she said, because Gwen – who had been with Devlin Properties ever since the days when their office was a trailer on a construction site in Queens – had never learned how to respect her boss. ‘What’s the bad news?’
‘You get to overhaul my schedule for the next month and locate me an apartment within walking distance of the Talbot Road in West London.’
‘London as in England?’ Gwen asked, the suspicion back with a vengeance.
‘Correct. I just got ordered by a judge here to do three hundred hours community payback. AKA court-ordered community service.’
‘In England? You have got to be kidding me?’ Gwen said, because she did not mince her words either. ‘How the hell did you manage that, Dev? You a badass in disguise?’
‘Apparently. Go figure, huh?’
Gwen’s deep forty-a-day chuckle rasped down the phone line.
Well hell, good to know someone is being entertained.
Chapter 6
‘Did someone speak to Benjy about Luke and his involvement with The Royale?’ Three hours after her date with Hendon Magistrates’ Court, Ruby raked her team with a beady eyeball of doom worthy of Thanos in Avengers: Endgame.
The staff were having a meeting in Matty’s flat to discuss the final prep for the talent show they were running in the lobby before the screening of About a Boy on the coming Saturday but first she needed to know what the heck had just happened in court.
Yes, Luke had been mouthy and irritable, but he was probably jet-lagged. And she wasn’t sure he had deserved to get shafted like that.
Three weeks ago, he’d stood beside her stoically through the whole ordeal in the police station without making one word of complaint, or casting any blame. He hadn’t even said ‘I told you so’, which would certainly have been within his rights because he had warned her they might get arrested. But more important than the arrest, he’d been there when she had needed someone. Not just to help get her over that gate physically, but also metaphorically. He’d stood beside her in the dark and sang a song he probably didn’t like so she could scatter Matty’s ashes without falling to pieces. And for that, he deserved better.
She’d had nearly a month to review the whole Titanic mess while waiting for their day in court, and there was one thing she’d figured out. Beneath Luke Devlin’s arrogance, his don’t-give-a-damn superiority and that mile-wide anti-sentimental streak there lurked a man of integrity. And that had to count for something.
Most of the team uttered denials, or looked confused but then she cast her beady eyeball on Beryl who had remained suspiciously silent.
It had to be her. Beryl knew Benjy much better than the rest of them, and she had voiced her dismay that Luke wasn’t going to save The Royale with his vast wealth, ever since the details of the will had become common knowledge among the staff … which was approximately twenty-four hours after she had sworn Jacie to secrecy on the matter.
Note to self: never trust a person to keep a secret, no matter how convincingly they fake the butter-wouldn’t-melt look.
‘Was it you, Beryl?’ Ruby asked.
‘I may have mentioned it in passing at the last Pensioners’ Matinee,’ she murmured, looking sheepish. ‘I didn’t know Benjy would be on the bench today. That was just surprisingly fortuitous,’ she added. ‘But I can’t say I regret it after the way Luke Devlin has treated us.’
‘But, Beryl, he didn’t do anything wrong,’ Ruby said. ‘He was only there to support me.’
‘That’s not the point,’ Jacie chimed in. ‘I’m with Team Beryl on this. I’m glad Benjy got creative – instead of just giving him some derisory fine. He’s Falcone’s son and he couldn’t care less about an institution which has idolised his father and everything his father stood for, for a generation. I mean, what’s he ever done to honour the guy’s legacy? Absolutely nothing. He’s never even admitted they’re related! It’s like he’s ashamed of Falcone. His own son.’
How would you know what a self-absorbed asshole he was, if you never actually met him?
Luke’s grudging comment echoed in Ruby’s head.
She had no idea what Falcone had done to his son to make him call him an asshole. But however much she idolised Falcone the movie icon, she had to believe Luke about Falcone the man. Because while she didn’t know much about Luke, she did know he was stoic, and guarded and almost pathologically pragmatic. He didn’t do emotion, fake or otherwise, or he would have made much more of a fuss about being dragged off to Hyde Park police station and then dragged back to Hendon Magistrates’ Court three weeks later.
If Luke said Falcone the man was an asshole, he probably was.
But she could see Jacie wasn’t interested in listening to that explanation. And Ruby wouldn’t have repeated Luke’s comment about his father anyway. Luke’s relationship with Falcone was personal and private.
‘He owns half the theatre and he won’t step in to save it,’ Jacie added.
‘Well, he made it clear he doesn’t intend to profit from it,’ Ruby replied. ‘There’s still a chance we could save it.’
‘We’ve got to find two million quid by the end of June,’ Jacie said, sounding exasperated. ‘Those odds aren’t exactly in our favour.’
‘I know.’ Ruby sighed, because to be fair, Jacie had a point.
‘I think a major charm offensive is in order when Luke Devlin comes to work off his community payback,’ Beryl chirped up. ‘If anyone can do it, you can, dear.’
Beryl’s rheumy grey eyes shone with a faith in Ruby and her charm capabilities which made her want to weep. ‘It seems to me Benjy has gifted us with an opportunity that we’d be foolish to waste,’ the older woman finished.
‘I very much doubt he’ll be working off his community payback, Beryl,’ Ruby replied gently. Surely his sharp suited legal team’s first objective would be to get the ruling overturned?
A pang of regret squeezed her ribs at the thought of never seeing Luke again, which was as delusional as everything else about this ridiculous mess.
‘But what if he does?’ Jacie said, her eyes sparking too now. ‘Quite apart from the repairs he could do, that’s three hundred hours of prime bonding time Benjy’s bought us. You never know, he might fall in love with the place despite himself.’
‘Are you actually serious right now?’ Ruby said, wondering when she had stopped being the only cock-eyed optimist in the village.
‘Hey, I know it’s a long shot,’ Jacie said, clearly warming to Beryl’s idea as the spark became a glow. ‘But with three hundred hours, you could totally Marcus him, Rubes. I have faith in you.’
‘Marcus him?’ Ruby said. ‘What are you even talking about?’
‘You know, Marcus, the dorky kid who shows Hugh Grant’s shallow wanker in About a Boy that the Will Show is actually an ensemble drama. We need Luke Devlin to become part of our ensemble drama, ASAP, if he’s gonna fork up two million quid to save us.’
�
��Strictly speaking, it isn’t Nicholas Hoult’s Marcus who turns Grant’s Will Freeman into a good guy,’ Claire their main cashier said, ever the film pedant. ‘It’s Rachel Weisz remember, because he wants to shag her.’
‘No, that’s much later in the movie, at first he wants to shag the nice Irish neighbour lady with the baby, so he pretends to have a kid.’ This from Imran, one of their bar staff who was even more pedantic than Claire about movie trivia.
‘What about the school talent show?’ Gerry countered. ‘That’s when Will really turns into a good guy because he can’t let Marcus survive that humiliation alone.’
‘Yes, but—’ Claire began again.
‘Can we stop talking about Hugh Grant and all the women he wants to shag in About a Boy,’ Ruby interrupted the game of film-buff-one-upmanship. ‘This isn’t a movie. And Luke Devlin’s not Hugh Grant …’
Except …
She sat down heavily in an armchair, her mind racing. Beryl and Jacie’s idea was insane … Wasn’t it?
Even if Luke didn’t find some slick way to wiggle out of the community service order, or have Benjy arrested for being a bent magistrate, what were the chances he even knew what an ensemble drama was?
He’d helped her out at the Serpentine when he didn’t have to, but that had been under duress.
Her gaze fell on the posters Beryl had brought with her for the talent show they were arranging to go with their Matty Classics’ gala screening of About a Boy on Saturday.
Hugh Grant’s Will had been a hopeless cause, too – his inner ensemble drama buried under a whole movie full of super sarcastic voice-over narration – but Nick Hoult’s nerdy bullied Marcus had eventually inducted Will into his alternative family. And it had only taken him an hour and forty-one minutes. The Royale would have three hundred hours to work on finding Luke Devlin’s sentimental side.
‘Admit it, there’s a chance it could work?’ Jacie said, interrupting Ruby’s racing thoughts.